A Zombie Epidemic Triggered by Bad Porridge: An Interview with Author Kiersten White on Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales
Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales
Hardcover $16.99
Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales
Hardcover $16.99
Just Right Reads is a series hosted by Kamilla Benko, children’s book editor and author of the forthcoming The Unicorn Quest, featuring newly released middle grade books and Q&As with your favorite authors!
Just Right Reads is a series hosted by Kamilla Benko, children’s book editor and author of the forthcoming The Unicorn Quest, featuring newly released middle grade books and Q&As with your favorite authors!
In the first installment, Kiersten White, New York Times-bestselling author of And I Darken and the Paranormalcy series, chats with Kamilla about Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales, her new collection of twisted fairy tales that put the scary back into old classics, along with cauldron-sized heapings of humor and wit. The anthology contains nine stories with titles such as “Little Dead Riding Hood” and “Goldilocks and the Three Scares” and features a Rapunzel who supports a Mohawk.
Both a YA author and a mother, Kiersten discusses what it’s like to write for different aged audiences as well as the importance of balancing horror with humor.
Beanstalker is your first novel for younger readers. What made you want to switch out your Young Adult hat and write for a younger audience?
I actually started out writing middle grade! But I think it’s much harder to write than YA, so it took me several years to feel my way to the right type of story for me to tell. This idea began as a series of jokes online. My editor, Erin Black at Scholastic, emailed me and said she thought there was a book there and she wanted it. I started toying with different ways to write it. In the end, I played to my strengths and the things I love: jokes, scary things, and the universality of fairy tales. Also more jokes.
At the moment, you’re also working on a YA series based on an epic, gender-swapped Vlad the Impaler—how difficult was it for you to toggle between that project and Beanstalker?
It was really refreshing to get to jump to Beanstalker in the middle of writing my And I Darken trilogy. Those books are heavy, requiring tons of research for a pretty dark narrative. So to get to switch to writing ten page long pee jokes and absurdly twisted nursery rhymes was such a relief! To prepare myself, I’d listen to the most upbeat, joyful music I could find, and consume a lot of sugar. (Really. That was my whole process. I’m a professional!)
In the past, you’ve shared funny excerpts of things your four-year-old has said—and whom I think must have co-wrote Beanstalker with you! Did your children help you at all when writing this book?
It’s true, my four-year-old is probably more obsessed with skeletons than the average child. If you ever meet him, he’ll solemnly inform you that your teeth are part of your skeleton you can see right now, and isn’t that cool? (No idea where he gets the combination of creepy and adorable. No idea at all…) My other kids are 13 and 11, but when I wrote Beanstalker they were right in my target age. It was really fun and new to get to share my writing with them. I read every section to them as I finished it; they were an excellent funny gauge. There were some things I thought would get laughs that didn’t, and others that got way bigger laughs than I had expected, so I could adjust accordingly.
What would you say to someone who believes that children shouldn’t read scary stories? And how do you know if something is too scary?
The Unicorn Quest
Hardcover $16.99
The Unicorn Quest
Hardcover $16.99
I definitely think the balance of humor and scary is what makes a middle grade work. Humor provides a release of the pressure that scary scenes can build up. And humor and horror are really similar in terms of how you accomplish them. You take something familiar and twist it, revealing it in a new light—either funny, or sinister. I think kids appreciate that, and are also self-selecting. As a mom, I’ve seen first hand that my kids know what they’re capable of handling. My daughter doesn’t get bothered by anything. My son is much more sensitive and has had to put books down because they were too intense. In Beanstalker, because I was playing with common—and frankly pretty silly—scary creatures, I didn’t worry that it was too scary. I mean, maybe there will be a zombie epidemic triggered by bad porridge, but if that’s the case, at least my readers will be prepared!
I definitely think the balance of humor and scary is what makes a middle grade work. Humor provides a release of the pressure that scary scenes can build up. And humor and horror are really similar in terms of how you accomplish them. You take something familiar and twist it, revealing it in a new light—either funny, or sinister. I think kids appreciate that, and are also self-selecting. As a mom, I’ve seen first hand that my kids know what they’re capable of handling. My daughter doesn’t get bothered by anything. My son is much more sensitive and has had to put books down because they were too intense. In Beanstalker, because I was playing with common—and frankly pretty silly—scary creatures, I didn’t worry that it was too scary. I mean, maybe there will be a zombie epidemic triggered by bad porridge, but if that’s the case, at least my readers will be prepared!
Finally, what was your favorite middle grade book as a child? (Based on some of the puns in this novel, I have a theory that you’re an Amelia Bedelia fan!)
I loved Amelia Bedelia! And Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and Pippi Longstocking. Later, I discovered Anne of Green Gables, which permanently stole my heart and is still a favorite. I also—unsurprisingly—loved the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine. They were always my first choice to take for reading at school! I also love Peter Pan. I definitely took some of my playful narrator cues from that book!
Beanstalker and Other Hilarious Scarytales is on B&N bookshelves now.